L. Fituni, I. Abramova Resource Potential of Africa and Russia's ...

This theoretic and scientific aura helped to present economic
links with Africa not just as a utilization of economic opportunities
but rather as a fulfillment of ideological obligations and duties by
the allegedly more developed and mature working class of the Soviet
Union to peoples that only embarked on the way of the struggle
for progress and freedom.
The independent African states were trying to accomplish the
tasks facing them, first of all by creating multi-sectoral national
economies and restructuring them. However, they came up against
enormous difficulties on this course. Though the fact is rarely mentioned
these days, but under the conditions of the Cold War, governments
of young African states faced much opposition from internal
pro-Western forces, former colonial powers and transnational
corporations.
In those circumstances, many countries applied for assistance to
the Soviet Union. A distinct group of African states emerged, that
identified their strategic developmental goals with the experience of
the Soviet Union and other socialist countries. Sometimes the leadership
of those African nations had also shared the Marxist ideological
platform, though, as real life showed later, sometimes their
choice had been driven by opportunistic considerations.
On the other hand, some leaders, not necessarily Marxists,
like Kwame Nkrumah, Sekou Touré, Julius Nyerere, Agostinho
Neto were original philosophers and profound thinkers, whose
personal principles and understanding of Good and Evil brought
them to the rejection of capitalism in the forms they knew and
turned them to this or that form of Socialist vision of the future
for their countries.
No matter how the Soviet past is assessed today, they found in
the USSR a reliable partner, friend and ally, ready to help them
solve the problems facing their countries. This assertion should be
considered in the context of the situation that existed in 1960s and
1970s, but not now.
Many western democracies, which today are keen on protecting
human right anywhere in the world, at that time fiercely opposed the
prospects of ending the colonial rule of European masters. For years,
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